Look, this is going to be rambling af so totally okay to skip this whole post because it’s me talking about something that gave me so much joy and I want to write it down for myself so I always remember it. It will not be well-written and if you are not a fan of Shelley Duvall you will be confused as shit. But in case you’re just here to check on Hailey, they are still in pain but much better and seem to be recovering well. YAY!
Still here? Okay. I’ve written before about how much I adore Shelley Duvall. I’ve seen almost everything she’s ever been in and her Faerie Tale Theatre show was one of my favorite things ever, especially because I’ve collected old children’s books (especially dark fairy tales) since I was a kid and never quit. (Click the link to watch Jeff Goldblum as a sassy wolf. Fun for all ages.)
Twelve years ago we lived in the Hill Country not far from Shelley and I never told her how much she meant to me because she was in a delicate state sometimes and I didn’t want to scare her with my adoration, but once we ran into her and she stopped Hailey (who’d dressed herself in a fluffy hat and poofy dress and green galoshes that looked like frogs) and asked her if she was a princess, because she certainly seemed to be one. And Hailey beamed and I may have cried a little afterward. It’s one of my favorite memories.
A local auction house is auctioning her things next month but this weekend they had an estate sale AT HER HOUSE and so of course I showed up at dawn and waited in the heat with so many other people who were so kind and shared their own Shelley stories. I told Victor that there were only two things I really wanted…a fairy tale book and a small flower crown that I’d seen in the preview pictures hanging with hundreds of her hats because it reminded me of one she’d worn in one of my favorite Faerie Tale Theatre episodes.
When I got inside I was overwhelmed because it’s a small house and it was PACKED (although everyone was very kind and helpful) and it was not air conditioned so I just ducked into the space just a few feet into the front door because that was as far as I could go without getting panicked…and that just so happened to be where hundreds of her fairy tale books were lined up. *magic* Victor had disappeared in the crowd so I picked up an armful of books I wanted and smiled at how many obscure books I skipped over because they were already in my weird collection. (WEIRD MINDS THINK ALIKE.) They weren’t in great shape (many had survived the California earthquake that convinced her to move back to Texas) but I don’t care about condition because I read them and don’t sell them. They were mostly $40 each and when Victor finally showed back up I handed him a big stack and he was like, “Really?” and I was like, “I know. I am showing great restraint here only because I know other people will want books too” and he was like, “No, I mean..do you really need all these books?” and I was like “Is that a trick question?” And he pointed out that I hadn’t even gotten to other rooms and I said, “Yes, but I can’t do it. This is enough. I’m happy.” And he was like, “What about the crown you wanted?” and I said, “Forget the crown. I need a xanax and a quiet corner” and then he turned to show me the flower crown in his arm that he’d picked up while I was in book heaven.
And when I got home I found a screenshot of Shelley Duvall in her crown and…
I went through the books one by one and most were inscribed with her name and the date she bought them and where she bought them (Abilene, London, NYC, Kyoto).
One that I’d never seen before was called Master Snickup’s Cloak and it was a very out-of-print dark fairy tale about syphilis, the dark ages, the plague, prostitutes and flagellation and the art was spectacular but what struck me most was this image of a giant with ship on his head in the sea, which I’d seen before in a Shelley Duvall movie ” Time Bandits”. Now, Shelley bought this book in 1979, but Time Bandits came out in 1981 so I assumed that this illustrator (Brian Froud) must’ve worked on the movie but when I looked him up it said that he hadn’t but that the director, Terry Gilliam, admitted to borrowing from “a book” by Froud. Was this the book? (Froud would later go on to work on The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.)
I spent the whole night reading her books and pouring over the illustrations and trying to identify what she was doing in her life on each date. Some books were bought during her time shooting The Shining but most were bought in the 80s when she was doing Faerie Tale Theatre. I also picked up an unpublished script for Aesop’s Fables that was marked with her production company’s logo. In an interview she’d said that wanted to start shooting the fables but hadn’t gotten to it. I suppose this was one of the pieces that never got made?
It was a little heartbreaking to see pieces like that, honestly, because it feels like her personal papers and one-of-a-kind scripts and photos should be in an archive or with a biographer or documentarian rather than scattered to the wind. Perhaps they were all copied before they were sold? I don’t know. Ephemera is so fleeting.
Yesterday I wanted to go back for the last hour of the sale because I really wanted to walk through her house and thought maybe the traffic would be better. (She lived down a one-lane, mile long country road and we were trapped for an hour trying to leave because you couldn’t leave if someone else was entering.) Victor agreed to take me and we figured if the traffic was still bad we’d just park and walk the mile but it was almost empty when we got there.
The house and barns were fairly empty of things, which was fine because I just wanted to walk through and say goodbye but then someone pointed out that there were bookcases in the garage that still had children’s books no one had wanted. They were mostly from the 60s through the 90s, and there were stacks of books that I’d read over and over from the library. Steven Kellogg, Mercer Mayer, Rosemary Wells, Marc Brown, Beverly Cleary. It was like a small, dusty time-capsule of my childhood. None of them were inscribed with her name and they weren’t in great shape but I was one of the last people remaining so they gave me a very good deal and so I pulled together a stack that I’d like to one day read to my grandkids if I have them. I got a few for my sister, for my mom, for friends who couldn’t make it but who were inspired by Shelley and her work with books.
The last one I picked up was a teddy bear book written by Kathleen Hague and illustrated by Michael Hague, which had a little water damage but my mom and sister and I love Michael Hague so I couldn’t leave it behind. When I got home I cleaned each book page by page and when I opened up the Hague book I found that it was signed by Kathleen and Michael and that Michael had drawn a teddy bear inside. 0_0 This seems like a silly thing to most people but when I told my mom and sister and sister they were like, “OMG” with so many exclamation marks so just believe me that this was an absolutely giddy hyperfixaction thrill.
It struck me how many of the antique fairy tale books that I bought were written by women (although often under their initials or pseudonyms) at a time when women weren’t often recognized or remembered as anything other than mothers and wives. I also saw how often the names of the books owners inscribed in the books were usually women…each a temporary guardian of stories that others may see as frivolous, but which carried secrets, inspiration and often offer a temporary sort of freedom and escape that was not always available to women.
One of the books I bought was a 1903 copy of The Ward of King Canute, by O.A. Liljencrantz. I bought the book this weekend from Shelley’s house. Shelley bought it second-hand in April of 1982. Before that it was owned by a woman named Rita Cantine, who died in Texas in 1976. Before that it was owned by Eliza Vanderveer Prince, who was a Brooklyn native (and died there in 1932) and who probably bought it new in 1903 from the F. Loeser and Co. Brooklyn Bookstore, who stamped the inside of the book. The author (Ottili Lilincrantz) was still alive at the time it was printed, but died at age 34 in 1916. She was best known for writing the book the silent film The Viking (1928) was based on. She was inspired by her drama teacher, Anna Morgan (1851-1936) who was the first person to put on a production of Caesar and Cleopatra with an all female cast. I know this all can seem like pointless details but if you’ve ever done genealogy you know who rare it is to be able to find women listed as anything more daughters, wives and mothers. Getting even a tiny glimpse into the minds and lives and tastes of women from as far back as the 1800’s using just a single book is sort of incredible. As each one wrote their name inside the book it made a spider web into the past, a note saying “I was here. I was real.”
I wrote my name in the book today. One day I assume there will be an estate sale for me and someone will pick this same book and write their name in it, which is sort of a lovely thought. In the end we are all just stories. But what amazing stories they can be.
Ps. As a small little rabbit hole in a whole post that is rabbit holes: One of my favorite things about children’s books is how often illustrators will hide tiny jokes in their pictures. I often go through the books with a magnifying glass and that’s how I found this infinitesimal image (truly smaller than a fingernail clipping) hidden on a newspaper in Graham Oakley’s The Church Cat Abroad (1973), that I picked up from Shelley’s house :
It cracked me up and made me look up the author and that took me to this 14-year-old blog post about how he couldn’t get published anymore after the 90s ended when there was a push-back on the detailed drawings with little jokes for parents and kids. His publisher said it was it was a bad idea to tuck in jokes and satire that kids wouldn’t get and he said that these books are for grown-ups to and would spur kids on to look up what they didn’t get or search to learn more. And now, 51 years after he published The Church Cat Abroad, I’m here doing just that.
